Notice his denial that there even is a Ukrainian nation. Maoist asshole.
" It has no past because we do not know where all this is coming from,
for example the fact that Ukraine is a component part of what was for
centuries called Russia; that only very recently did an independent
Ukraine take shape, within the framework of a very particular historical
process: the unravelling of the Soviet Union"
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 5:21 PM, Ralph Johansen <mdriscollrj at charter.net>wrote:
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>>> "What strikes me about the Ukrainian situation, considering what we learn
> reading the press, listening to the radio etc., is that it is captured and
> understood according to an operation that I would call the complete
> stagnation of the contemporary world. The commonplace narrative is to say
> that Ukraine wants to join free Europe, breaking with Putin's despotism.
> There is a democratic and liberal uprising whose goal is to join our
> beloved Europe -- the motherland of the freedom in question -- while the
> sordid, archaic manoeuvres of the Kremlin's man, the terrible Putin, are
> directed against this natural desire. What is striking in all this is that
> everything is framed in terms of a static contradiction. Well before the
> Ukraine affair there was already a fundamental schema constantly at work,
> distinguishing the free West from all the rest. The free West has but one
> mission, that of intervening everywhere it can in order to defend those who
> want to join it. And this static contradiction has neither a past nor a
> future.
>> It has no past because -- and it is particularly typical in the Ukrainian
> case -- nothing about Ukraine's own real history is ever considered, named
> or described. Who cared about Ukraine before last week? Many people did not
> even have much idea where it was... Ukraine, champion of European freedom,
> suddenly takes to the stage of History; and this is possible because what
> is taking place there can be described in terms of the static contradiction
> between Europe, motherland of freedom, democracy, free enterprise and other
> such splendours, and then all the rest, including Putin's barbarism and the
> despotism that goes with it.
>> It has no past because we do not know where all this is coming from, for
> example the fact that Ukraine is a component part of what was for centuries
> called Russia; that only very recently did an independent Ukraine take
> shape, within the framework of a very particular historical process: the
> unravelling of the Soviet Union.
>> Similarly, the fact that Ukraine has always had separatist tendencies and
> that these have constantly been reactive: that is, backed by strongly
> reactionary powers and even worse. The Ukrainian Orthodox clergy, whose
> sacred city is Kiev, has played a determining role in all this, and it goes
> without saying that it is the most reactionary on Earth, a megalomaniac
> centre of Imperial Orthodoxy. This separatism at certain moments reached
> extremes that no one could forget, particularly not the Russian people,
> knowing that the vast mass of the Nazi-armed and organised armies coming
> from Russian territory were Ukrainian. The Vlasov army was a Ukrainian army.
>> Today we can even read the history of Ukrainians turning entire villages
> to blood and fire, including French ones. A good part of the repression of
> the /maquis/ in central France was carried out by Ukrainians. We are no
> identitarians, we are not going to say: 'What bastards, those Ukrainians!',
> but all this does constitute a history, the history of a certain number of
> the political subjects in Ukraine.
>> Moreover, the contradiction has no future, because the future is
> pre-constituted: the Ukrainians' desire will be to rally to good-old
> Europe, an already-existing citadel of freedom. The operations imposing
> this finitude here bear on time itself. If time is finished, it is because
> it has been stopped. The time of propaganda is an immobile time. It is very
> difficult to make propaganda for a time-in-becoming: we can make propaganda
> for what /is /but not for what /is/ /becoming/. And here we have the
> propaganda that the Ukrainian uprising is static, in that it came out of
> nothing and is heading towards something that already existed, democratic
> free Europe."
>> full at: http://simongros.com/text/articles/alain-badiou/alain-> badiou-ukraine-egypt-finitude-present-defaults-unless-crowd-declares/
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